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Ohio regulators have launched an investigation into whether FirstEnergy Solutions can charge
consumers for its extra expenses to obtain electricity during the extreme cold of this past
January.

The Akron-based energy company has said it plans to charge households a one-time fee of $5 to
$15, even if those customers have contracts that call for a fixed price or a guaranteed discount
off the regulated price.

Business customers would pay up to 3 percent of their annual electricity-generation cost, which
could be substantial, though no examples were available.

“A lot of customers are shocked or surprised,” said Greg Bechert, managing partner of Scioto
Energy, a Columbus company that helps businesses find ways to reduce energy costs. His company has
several hundred customers with FirstEnergy Solutions contracts.

No other major electricity suppliers in Ohio have said they plan to charge a similar fee.

This affects 2.1 million customers in six states that have signed up with FirstEnergy Solutions
as an alternative to their local utility, including many in central Ohio, the company said.
FirstEnergy Solutions has an additional 600,000 or so customers who would not pay the fee for
various reasons.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio responded to complaints about the fees yesterday by
opening an investigation “to determine whether it is unfair, misleading, deceptive or
unconscionable” to charge these fees. The commission’s staff will conduct the probe and is asking
for comments from interested parties. The case number is 14-0568.

FirstEnergy Solutions is a subsidiary of FirstEnergy, a company that also owns electricity
utilities in Ohio and several other states.

“We understand that there are a lot of questions, simply because what happened in January was
unpredictable and unforeseen,” said spokeswoman Diane Francis.

In January, when temperatures dropped to around zero, electricity demand came close to exceeding
the supply. This raised concerns about brownouts and blackouts.

PJM Interconnection, the company that manages the flow of electricity in a multistate region,
made several moves to make sure there was enough power. It paid for those actions with a surcharge
on companies that were buying power on the market.

FirstEnergy Solutions paid more of those charges than any other entity because it is the largest
competitive electricity supplier in most of the areas it serves. Francis declined to give the
dollar figure, but she did say the January amount was greater than the company paid for similar
charges in all of 2013.

Under FirstEnergy Solutions’ contracts with customers, it has the right to charge additional
fees when there are one-time regulatory events such as this. The provision is not unusual, but this
is an unusually high charge.

Bechert has concerns that the charges will make customers apprehensive about signing up with an
electricity supplier.